Posts tagged social media in business

When we started talking to our clients in early 2008 about social media and the need to start engaging, there were a few cautious nods of approval. Everyone was sitting on the fence, not convinced of the potential or the need for social media in their business.

Three and a half years on, organisations know they need to understand social media and, while some of them are still careful, they are willing to learn and try.

I’ve been asked lately to speak at various CEO functions on the power of social networking for business. Putting things into context, I always take the More >

LinkedIn can be used as a simple ‘business card holder’ where all you do is connect with people so you can have their up-to-date contact details at all times. Or, on the other hand, it can be used as a powerful connection channel to create new contacts, deepen relationships and open the doors to business opportunities.

In both cases, as LinkedIn is a network of professional connections, there is a fundamental need to nurture your contacts.

I was invited last week to speak at the CEO Institute on the power of LinkedIn for business and below is my ‘P-E-R-M’ principle More >

I was invited last week to speak at the CEO Institute on ‘The power of connection for business: social networking’. I painted a picture of where social media fits in the overall public relations and communication plans of a business and explained where the opportunities to engage on these platforms for businesses are.

The presentation generated some very important questions from the small and medium business owners attending the session. The four key points the group took away were:

Have you gone through one day lately without hearing or reading the words ‘Facebook’, ‘Twitter’, ‘LinkedIn’, ‘YouTube’ or ‘social media’? If so, you must be on a holiday on a desert island (without your smartphone!).

Everyone is talking about them.

Through my engagement with small businesses, I hear a lot of people telling them: “You should really be on Facebook! Are you on Twitter?”.

There’s no secret here, social media does offer great opportunities for business. But for a small business with limited resources, the social media discourse is one that can be confusing, daunting or even scary!

Around Christmas time last year (2010), the promoters of Big Day Out announced that patrons attending the second Sydney show would be allowed to take a friend for free, as capacity was just over the midway point (19, 000), which caused uproar within the music community as it was effectively offering half price tickets.

Big Day Out (BDO) is an annual music festival which began in 1992 and is held across Australia and New Zealand in January every year. Each year the line-up of artists has been bigger and better, with the likes of Nirvana, Iggy Pop, The Ramones, Red Hot More >

My last blog ‘Marketing vs PR – What’s the difference?’ generated a few comments and questions about PR and marketing and which discipline should prevail. The discussion led to a different but related topic raised by PR professional Craig Pearce: the relationship between dialogic [two-way] vs monologic [one-way] communication and when it might be appropriate to use one over the other.

Moving into 2011 there are a number of predictions floating around about what this year might hold. Everything from the top 10 products of CES 2011 (including tablets, 3D TVs, internet enabled televisions and “smart” appliances) to the future of social media.

I therefore thought this was a great time to look at the trends that I think will be seen in the PR industry in 2011.
The best article I read and which I agree with the most is one from Mashable, a social media news site, so I will summarise what they had to say here.

Syncapse, a social media management company, recently conducted a study around measuring the Return on Investment (ROI) of Facebook.

According to the study each Facebook fan is worth $136.38.

At the Sydney Bloggers Festival I recently attended, the overall consensus was that you really cannot put an ROI figure on your Facebook page. Therefore when I saw this statement from Syncapse on a blog post by Jeff Bullas I was intrigued as to how on earth they came up with this number.

How the study worked was that Syncapse collected data from over 4,000 consumers across North America about the top 20 More >

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